Tuesday 7 January 2020

Sing, Goddess

As even Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel distances itself from the murder of General Soleimani, that does give it the opportunity to focus its attention elsewhere, on the nearby country that has just given a four month suspended sentence to Freya Heath.

Although she is appealing, Heath stands convicted of having falsely accused 12 Israelis of raping her. Most of them were minors at the time, unlike her, and at least one of them was as young as 15.

Four months suspended. For that. In 1974, Israel invaded Cyprus by proxy, with the Americans having to stop the British from going to war on the other side. But who needs a proxy this time?

Both that murder in Baghdad and this case in Ayia Napa have a certain mythological quality to them. Heavily embellished but fundamentally unchanged, it is possible to imagine that these stories will still be told in three thousand years' time as the background to their earth-shattering consequences, literally the stuff of legend.

And politicians will be caught out when they pretend to know the Late English original, composed sometime between 2500 and 3000 although nobody is really quite sure, but they turn out to be spewing forth gibberish into the ether.

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